Daddy is at home today

Was at home today with MC due to really bad cough. So bad I've gotta go to the toilet every 1/2hr to purge the phlegm. (Ok, so much for the gory stuff.) Since I was at home, might as well make full use of the time and take some photos of my beloved son :)

Boy boy having fun on musical aeroplane


He noticed I was taking photos


Enjoy this series :)


Boy boy has been refusing to eat his food lately. Out of desperation, we started to use the TV to distract him and he seems to be taking to this series called "Baby Einstein". Here's a photo of him fixated on the TV while he is being fed.

Day Out!

Yesterday was day out for Mummy and Caleb. Mummy and Caleb dropped Daddy off at work before proceeding to hang out with Mummy's good friend, Aunty Joy.

Mummy and Caleb visited Aunty Joy's apartment. It was really nice and cosy and Caleb settled in to the new environment quickly.

Here's Caleb drinking milk in Aunty Joy's apartment


And Aunty Joy looking amused as Caleb drinks his milk


And a video of Caleb exploring Aunty Joy's cushion, after which, Caleb proceeded to practice imitating what he thinks a dinasaur should sound like.


Poor Caleb was so tired out by the outing that he fell asleep as soon as we got into the car. He didn't eat much for lunch so Mummy gave him some bread. He actually fell asleep with the bread in his hand.


Here's a rejuvenated Caleb. We stopped by a shopping mall and he wanted to sit in the ride with Barney. Look at how he grabs the steering wheel and pushes the buttons. Mummy thinks that he has the makings of an aggressive driver in future.


We ended the outing with tea at Coffee Bean. Grace came to join Mummy and Aunty Joy when she heard that Caleb was with us.

Check out the photos that Caleb took with the Tan sisters.

One Thursday Morning

It was early one Thursday morning when he was roused from his sleep, when the sun had not even risen. Suddenly, there were other people in the house, not just the 2 he often sees, but others. They came and took away some huge boxes while he was made to change his clothes. He was then hustled into a vehicle and was driven off to this bright, huge building with lots and lots of people. After that, it was a blur, as people came and went, surrounding him seeking attention. He basked in their attention, not knowing that the man he was so familiar with was looking constantly at him as if to capture a mental video sequence of him for rememberance.
Then the photo taking began. He had already become quite accustomed to that and didn't find it strange. But then, there was a moment when he was huddled together with the 2 familiar adults, praying, a familiar activity, yet in an unfamiliar place, that he may have sensed something was amiss. The man carried and hugged him, smoldering him with kisses, not unusual, but yet quite excessively then. Is the man leaving him? The man he called Daddy. He gave Daddy a long big hug, listening to his breath and heartbeat as Daddy silently prayed for God's protection over him and remembered the boy's smell and embrace.

Mummy came and assured him that Daddy will be back in 10 days. How long is 10 days? Will he forget Daddy's face?
The 10 days came and went, and Caleb still remembers, the face, the hug, the breath, the smile, the play, the catching, his name..."Deh-Deh!".

Regarding Father's Day

Here's a man which I had fun with growing up, playing together during my younger days, then watching soccer together, and more recently, playing with Caleb together. My own father, Caleb's grandpa... the generations of male bonding.

Daddy's back at bloggin!

Yup, this is the first post by Daddy after being back, after 3 days... caught a sore throat and flu, been sleeping my days away trying to recover quickly in order to play with little cute Boy boy.
I must admit that it was really a huge relief that Caleb recognised and called me,'deh deh' at the airport. Throughout the whole 10 days, it was familee that I missed most :)
It was really great that Mummy was able to blog everyday, but unfortunately, I didn't have www access, but still, I had great fun and joy reading the posts when I got back. And I did notice that Mummy had lots of praise from lots of people who were glad that they got a daily update dose of Caleb... I will try my best to keep up to Mummy's pace, but no gaurantees :).
Well, the photos below are those that I took of Caleb the very next day after I came back.




And here's some photos of Caleb helping Daddy pack some stuff for the trip.

This one below looks like he's drinking some bottle of beer or something :)


And I remember someone asking for photos of Caleb's baby competition, we didn;t actually take many photos, but here's one which we took there. By the way, Caleb made it to the semi-finals which will be held on 16th July at Suntec :)


And here's a photo that I've wanted to blog for a long time but never got down to doing it... Caleb's grandpa and grandma having some fun at his party! Lots of fun!

Daddy's Home!

Daddy came home on Saturday night. We waited at the airport from 10.30pm but the flight was slightly delayed and by the time Daddy and the team got their luggage out, it was midnight! Caleb was really tired out by then but he refused to go to sleep at the airport and kept wanting to run around the place. Mummy really had a hard time trying to keep him still.
When Daddy finally came out of the luggage area and came towards us, Caleb gave a big smile and stretched out his arms for Daddy to carry. Daddy said he heaved a sigh of relieve that his little boy still remembered him. Well, Daddy didn't have to worry coz the next morning, when Caleb woke up, the first thing he did was to give a bright smile, pointed at Daddy and called him "Deh-Deh". He's really Daddy's little boy.

Dancing Genes

Mummy and Daddy think that Caleb has inherited strong dancing genes from us. He seems to enjoy dancing and music. Whenever there's upbeat music, you can almost be sure that he'll break into a dance and start bobbing his body up and down, stamping his feet or swaying from side to side. If you sing to him and ask him to dance, he'll oblige too. The "sure winner" is to play Hi-5. He gets really excited by the opening song which is very catchy and upbeat. As soon as he hears the opening song, he would rush to the front of the TV and start doing his dance and this comes complete with hand movements. Unfortunately Mummy haven't managed to capture that on video yet but here's a video of Caleb enjoying a dancing session in the afternoon. He was a little distracted by Mummy's camera pouch but he still did his dance.

Caleb the creative climber

Wonder why this photo was taken? Well, Caleb has always been eager to climb onto the sofa but have not managed to do so coz he's not tall enough.
Mummy and Caleb were playing by the sofa and Mummy had walked away for a moment and when Mummy came back, Caleb was seated on the sofa. Mummy couldn't believe her eyes. She realised that Caleb had tilted his toy (which is a wooden board with ABCs) against the sofa, and used it as a step to help himself onto the sofa. That's what Mummy calls creative problem solving! I think it's every Mummy's dilemma. On one hand, that's very analytical thinking for his age. On the other hand, Mummy better watch the boy every minute. Who knows what he'll do next!

Playtime

Caleb spent the afternoon playing with his cousin Nicole Jiejie.
Here's the two of them posing with their school bags.


And then playing with the telephone and the tambourine...


And when they got tired of playing with the toys, they turned to playing with Nicole Jiejie's slippers...

Does Caleb miss Daddy? - Part II

This afternoon, Mummy was playing with Caleb and all of a sudden he pointed at Mummy and called Mummy "Deh-Di"(Daddy). Mummy's thinking thank God Daddy's coming home soon. Little Caleb is starting to think that Mummy is his Daddy as well??!!

Does Caleb miss Daddy?

This afternoon, Mummy and Caleb were looking at photos that Daddy and Mummy had taken with Caleb when he was still a newborn.

Mummy: Caleb, where's baby?
Caleb: points to himself in the photo and says "bear-be" (baby)
Mummy: Caleb, where's Mummy?
Caleb: Laughs out loud and points to Mummy as though he's very tickled that Mummy actually asked him where she is
Mummy: Caleb, where's Daddy?
Caleb: silence... and then walks away...

Mummy gets a little worried by Caleb's reaction and decides to ask him again. This time, Mummy points to Daddy in the photo and asks Caleb.

Mummy: Caleb, who is this?
Caleb: looks at the photo of Daddy and says "bear-be"(baby) and walks away again and starts playing with his toys...
Mummy: ???!!! (scratch head)

Mummy's conclusion... either Caleb does not want to talk about Daddy coz he misses him or he's upset that Daddy has not appeared for so long...or Caleb is just trying to be cheeky. Well, we'll decide which is which when we see Caleb's reaction when Daddy comes home. 4 more days to go! Yeah!

No touching of the fan

This morning, the first thing that Caleb did when he woke up was to sit up abruptly, point to the fan at the edge of the bed and shake his finger to say "no-no". Mummy was really amused because he did it so abruptly.
We had a "discipline" session when Caleb was about 9 months plus. He kept wanting to crawl to the fan in the room to touch it. We told him very sternly that he was not allowed to touch the fan. He was quite trying at the moment that we were trying to teach him not to touch the fan but after that, he was ok and each time he sees the fan, he would shake his finger to say "no-no"

Here's Mummy reiterating the fan lesson to Caleb this morning

Clean, Clean, Clean

Caleb's latest obsession of late, is to use a piece of cloth or tissue or wet wipe to clean things. He has helped to clean the table top attached to his high chair, some parts of the floor, the carpet, cupboards and even the shower partition in the toilet. And sometimes, after completing his cleaning, if Mummy doesn't stop him in time, he'll use the same piece of cloth to rub his hair!

Here's a video of Caleb cleaning the carpet. He gives a bonus performance in this video. After cleaning the carpet, he proceeds to show how flexible he is by squeezing through his toy walker. Makes you wonder what the kid is thinking??

Caleb and his carseat

Today Mummy took the car and went out in the afternoon with Caleb to run some errands. Caleb was really good and sat all by himself in his car seat at the back. It was a really big achievement for Mummy and Caleb since Mummy has always been apprehensive about driving alone with Caleb.
Daddy and Mummy were extremely inspired 2 months ago when we saw one of our care group members' daughter who's 2 years old sitting all by herself in the backseat whilst her parents both sat in front. That prompted us to try to train Caleb to do that as well. Since Caleb came, Mummy always has to sit behind with Caleb and entertain him while he sits in his carseat. Sitting in front with Daddy is a rare treat for Mummy and the few times that Mummy got to sit in front with Daddy in the car, felt like the "pat tor" (dating) days again.
So anyhow, last month, we noticed that Caleb seemed to be taking to the car seat more and didn't need Mummy to constantly talk, sing and play with him to get him to stay put in his seat and a few weeks ago, we felt that the time was right for Mummy to progress to sitting in front with Daddy.

Here's a video of Caleb sitting in his car seat all by himself for the very first time. Mummy took a peep at him and found him hilarious! He was chewing up his stuff toy and looking out of the window and going on and on in his baby talk.


And here's Caleb very pleased with himself for being such a good boy when we reached our destination



Mummy must have driven really well today coz when we reached home, Mummy looked behind and found Caleb asleep in his car seat!

Happy Father's Day Daddy!

Today is the 2nd year that Daddy gets to celebrate Father's Day. Although Daddy's not around, Mummy and Caleb still wants to tell Daddy that he is a great, loving, fun and excellent Daddy.

5 little things on why Daddy is doing such a great job:
1) Since Caleb has been conceived, Daddy has been very excited and involved in preparing and welcoming Caleb into the family. Daddy attended every ante-natal class with Mummy and Daddy was more enthusiastic about reading up on baby magazines, baby books, going on the internet to read up on baby development etc

2) Daddy can take care of Caleb on his own without Mummy's help. From bathing, to cooking Caleb's meals, to putting Caleb to sleep. He can do it all. Just last week, Daddy told Mummy that if Mummy goes away on a holiday, he will have no problems looking after Caleb full time on his own. (Obviously Mummy is EXTREMELY happy to hear that!)

3) Daddy is Caleb's preferred playmate. Playtime with Daddy is always filled with lots of action, laughter and excitment. Daddy has always been very creative when playing with Caleb and will do the wildest and craziest things with him, whilst Mummy is obviously more sedated.

4) Daddy is Caleb's preferred parent. Eversince Mummy stopped breastfeeding, Caleb's looks for Daddy more than Mummy. When Daddy dresses up to go to work, Caleb will start to cling on to Daddy and sometimes would cry and refuse to say "bye bye" when Daddy leaves for work. Daddy tried to comfort Mummy by telling her that he read in the book "Bringing up Boys" that boys will start to draw closer to their father between 13 to 18 months as they search for the father figure to model after. Mummy thought about it and decided that she'll rather Caleb model after Daddy than her after she saw Caleb take a plastic peg and tried to put it on his hair after he watched Mummy wear a hairclip on her hair.

5) Daddy loves Caleb A LOT! There are so many nights where Daddy will lie in bed and stare at our Caleb who is sleeping and go... "Aiyoh, this boy is so cute lah" and start kissing him on his cheek.

Here's some photos of Daddy with Caleb over the past year. Most of the time, Daddy is the one snapping away with his camera so these are rare moments where they get a photo taken together.

Daddy bathing Caleb during Mummy's confinement period (Ya, always the good Daddy and husband)


Daddy taking a power nap with Caleb


Daddy bathing Caleb again. This time in the hotel's toilet sink whilst Mummy was working in Hong Kong for a week. Next time Caleb can tell his friends that he bathed in a hotel toilet sink before.



Daddy and Caleb making monkey faces at Christmas party. Told you Daddy's more fun to be with!


Caleb and Daddy during Chinese New Year


Daddy with Caleb at the basketball court having bonding time

Caleb's day

Here's a pix of Caleb this morning eating his breakfast of corn flakes and milk. See the tiny milk moustache that he has.


Here's Caleb taking his afternoon nap. He skipped his morning nap today coz Grandma and Mummy brought Caleb to the market and came back quite late so he was really really tired out and dozed off on his own after lunch.


In the afternoon, Mummy had a visitor! Aunty Yvonne came to visit and play with Caleb at our house. Here's Caleb trying to get onto his scooter whilst posing for the photo with Aunty Yvonne.


We ended the day by attending the surprise birthday party that Aunty Angie prepared for Uncle Jason (although Uncle Jason was not that surprised) Here's a pix that Uncle EK took of Mummy and Caleb at the party.

A Quiet Day

We didn't do much today. Both Caleb and Mummy stayed home and did the usual things... play, eat, sleep, drink milk. That's Caleb's routine. Wake up, eat breakfast, play, drink milk, sleep, eat lunch, play, drink milk, sleep, eat dinner, play, drink milk, sleep. Sounds fun? I have people coming up to me to tell me that they are envious of Caleb's lifestyle. Don't need to do anything, just eat, sleep and play.
But that's basically what we did today. The highlight of the day was that we went to Grandma's place to stay over since Daddy's not around.

The other thing that Mummy's really excited about is that Caleb seems to be quite eager to pick up new words these two days. He's been practising saying "baby". Sometimes, his pronunciation is really accurate, sometimes, it sounds more like "bear-be". And he likes to say it in this tiny, high pitch voice which really amuses Mummy.

And at Grandma's house, Caleb was playing with Nicole Jiejie's toy cooking ware and after Mummy introduced him the words, "bowl" and "spoon", he could tell Mummy what they were when Mummy asked him again. The acid test will be whether he is able to tell Mummy what they are tomorrow. (Yah, Mummy, stop stressing poor Caleb :p)

Anyway, Caleb's vocabulary now consists of the following words:
"There" - this is the word of the month. He loves pointing a direction out to us and telling us where he wants to go by saying "There" (again in his tiny, high pitch voice)
"ball" - this is his first word
"throw" - there was a stage where he kept throwing things and saying "throw". Thank God he is growing out of it.
"drop" - He started with dropping things and proceeded on to throwing things and verbalising it.
"cat" - Mummy showed Caleb a picture of a cat yesterday and asked him what it was. He paused for 5seconds and then said "cat". (Mummy thinks he's really smart coz it's a drawing of a cat which he has never seen before!)
"baby" - ya, Caleb will walk around the house and say "baby" out of no where
"bird" - Caleb's favourite activity when we are out walking in the park. Look out for birds to chase.
"duck" - Somehow he has quite a few ducky things from rubber ducky toy to rubber ducky bathtub, so this is something that he is familiar with and can easily identify
"bus" - he's not perfected this word yet. He kinda leave out the "s" when he sees a bus and goes "bar" when he points to it.
"daddy" - ok, Caleb always calls Daddy in the nicest,sweetest voice. When Daddy comes home from work, he would break out into a big, wide smile, point at Daddy really excitedly and go "Deh-Di!" and sometimes he says "Deh-Deh" but always with his nicest, sweetest voice.
"mummy" - Unlike Daddy, Caleb does not give Mummy any nice, cute, sweet voice but will just give an abrupt "MA!" (makes you wonder who's the one slogging it out at home for little Caleb, cleaning after his poo and cooking all the delicious meals and not a single smile when calling Mummy)ok, recently there has been a slight improvement and he has started calling me "ma-mee" on and off.

I think there are more words that Caleb says but that's all Mummy can remember for now.

And Daddy, here's the picture of the day - a photo of Mummy and Caleb after Caleb's bath!

Daddy's Away!

Daddy left this morning for a mission trip so it'll just be Mummy and Caleb for the next one and a half weeks. Daddy has tasked Mummy to update the blog everyday so that he can see pix of Caleb and Mummy whenever he gets a chance to go online.

So here's the updates for today. Enjoy Daddy!

Pix of Caleb taking his morning nap after we came home from the airport. We woke up at 5.30am just to send Daddy to the airport so the boy was very tired and slept a little longer.


Highlight #1 of the day: Caleb finished his lunch and dinner.
(This is a big relieve for Mummy and Daddy because for 1 week, Caleb has been refusing to eat whatever we have cooked for him. He will either raise his hands in protest, or spit out his food so meal times have been extremely challenging)
We noticed that he seems to want to eat rice and not porridge so Mummy decided to cook fried rice with carrots, corn, green peas and fish and he ate it up!
Here's a pix of the fried rice that Mummy cooked.



Hightlight #2: Caleb said his first 2 syllabus word today!
Mummy was showing Caleb a video that she had taken of him and he pointed at himself in the video and said "baby". Caleb has seen photos of himself when he was much younger and we had told him that that was Caleb as a baby. Mummy was really amused by him and since Caleb was in a very cheery mood today, Mummy decided to ask him to say "baby" again and record it so that Daddy could get a glimpse of it as well.

Caleb's teething season

As we mentioned in our previous post, Caleb has started his teething season since Wednesday and has been feverish and cranky since. We woke up that morning and found him just lying quietly beside us and looking very listless. A typical morning for us would be to have Caleb waking us up by sprawling himself on top of us and trying to wake us up to play with him, so this is really not typical behaviour. We carried him, and found him feverish and lethargic.
We weren't sure what it was then and brought him to the doc who said to observe him and give him fever medicine. If he doesn't develop any cough, or rashes, it's probably that he's teething. Well he hasn't developed any cough/ running nose or rashes, but he has been drooling a lot and keeps rubbing his mouth so we concluded that he must be teething.
It's been a tough 3 days since. We tried everything. We gave him water, his favourite cereal, his favourite toy, milk which he loves, Mummy in her desperate attempt even offered to let him play with the camera but he just didn't want anything. He only wants to be carried round the house and wants us to sing to him. We can't even put him down when he's asleep. He would only sleep if he is lying on our chest. If there's any hint of us trying to put him on the bed, he would start crying and it will take us another hour before we can get him to sleep.
Well, the first day was the worst but now he is much better and reverting to his normal self, though he still wants us to carry him around the house. He's fever has gone down and he's willing to start playing with his toys.

Here's a short video of him feeling better and playing music to cheer himself up!

Paiseh! Paiseh! Here are the Birthday Pics!

In case our overseas friends are thinking, 'What does paiseh mean?', it means apologies with a embarassed tone carried with it. As you might imagine then, yes, it's been a while since this blog has been updated. Reasons are manifold, the usual would be work, added with missions, and most recently, Caleb's teething-inducing-fever saga which has been going on for the past 2 days. He's feeling very irritated by his teething-gums and just cannot be pacified sometimes. In fact, wife had to carry him for 2.5 hr straight (she's saying she can even feel her muscle grow from that). It is only in the past few hours that he's been feeling a bit better.

Anyway, back to the birthday pics... thanks to Andrew (caleb's uncle), Raveen and Grace (caleb's daddy and mummy's frens), the following pics are for your enjoyment.

The ladies man


Exploring the function room and all the uncles & aunties


Delighted at the attention he's getting


Intrigued by the candle...playing with fire (they start young)


Caleb eating a piece of his birthday cake... the first taste of cream! Growing older has its privileges :)


Hiding from the paparrazis...


Posing for 8-days magazine Cover page :)


Caleb enjoying a laugh with Mummy...